Archive for July 2024

19 posts from 03 to 24 July 2024.

  • Inside Out 2

    First world problems elevated to life-threatening conditions, as any teenager believes.

  • 300

    This story doesn’t need to be directly interpreted as the last stand of Europe against the Asiatic hordes, since Attila and Genghis Khan are well into the future. It can be bloody Asterix, some monarchist anarchists fight an invasion by an evil empire.

  • Babylon A.D.

    Mary Mother of (twin) Christs. It’s an “adaptation” of the escape from Egypt, where Mary is played by Michelle Yeoh and Joseph by Vin Diesel. But Baby Jesus is actually Mary, it’s confusing.

  • Thanksgiving

    Eli Roth mixes the worse parts of random high school slashers and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s very mainstream, not hideous like Hostel.

  • Crank

    Borderline experimental action film. A bunch of vignettes on teenage radical stuff, very juvenile, 90’s nu-metal, very fast cameras with fisheye lenses.

  • The Black Phone

    Just another Stranger Things ripoff: kids in violent situations (including swearing), nostalgia for the 70’s, there’s no third element. Ethan Hawke might have lost a bet with Jason Blum and was forced into this.

  • Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

    Tim Burton’s Back to the Future version, with his trademark horror themes. A solid children’s film, where the hero hooks up with his own grandfather’s ex.

  • The Voyeurs

    Sexually frustrated Sydney Sweeney stars in horny Rear Window, with two twists in the last minutes.

  • In the Heart of the Sea

    Well, an actual Ron Howard film that is not utter crap? Imagine that. Wiped clean of deviant sexuality and dick jokes, just Apollo 13 in the Pacific Ocean.

  • Moneyball

    Good grief, the Michael Lewis rot was there from the start. This was even co-written by Aaron Sorkin, for the radical centrist bingo. It was just hidden under the mass of talented actors squeezing blood from a stone.

  • 65

    Planet of the Apes meets After Earth. This follows all modern trends to a T, but it works. The kid is actually great, and Adam Driver is a good at being befuddled the whole film.

  • OSS 117: Alerte Rouge en Afrique Noire

    James Bond meets Starship Troopers. It’s a more political Austin Powers, ultra-reactionary.

  • 8mm

    What a great gem. Thematically extreme, but touches so many facets of human nature, it’s almost blissful. He who fights monsters…

  • The Birds

    What a bizarre horror film. It has elements of zombie films but so much is left unsaid, feel like a truncated release. The main plot is an hardcore family psychodrama, which gets abandoned half way on account of the freaking birds. And that ending, what the fuck was that?

  • The Magnificent Seven

    A mediocre remake of a mediocre remake of Seven Samurai. With such a large budget and a good cast, not a great film comes out of it. Nothing magnificent about this.

  • Triangle of Sadness

    What a rollercoaster ride of emotions. It starts of a bit too on the nose, and goes completely farcical on the Captain’s Dinner, but the island section is great. The ending freaking sucks, they can shove those damned open ended finales. High-Rise is better at this.

  • Barry Lyndon

    An opera in two acts, ain’t nobody got time for more, what are we, 18th century aristocrats? Pure Kubrickian technical flex, a visual marvel, but the plot itself is pretty alien for modern audiences: not only the Irish are not reviled as philandering devils, pretty much all situations are preposterous by modern standards.

  • Getaway

    Gone in 60 Seconds (the old one, the stunt showreel) meets self-insert fic about some Bulgarian billionaire. It’s the only way to explain this.

  • Burn After Reading

    Play it, Tuli!